Happy Friday, esteemed thwack members! I wanted to take a second to remind everyone that thwack will be undergoing maintenance tonight, February 27th at 7PM CST for several hours. We are estimating that we will be back online around 2AM CST on Saturday, February 28th. This scheduled maintenance is directly related to work the community team has been performing over the past 4 months. We have been working on upgrading and enhancing the community platform. In addition, we also set out to simplify, modernize and overall improve the end user experience on thwack with the help of the SolarWinds User Experience team and extensive research. Please note a few of the changes you should expect when we return!

Sleek new global navigation

Simplified product forum pages which will include navigation to all applicable content resources for your product(s)

Enhanced profiles to easily connect with your peers

Newly added thwack Community Feature Request forum - tell us what you want to see out of the community!

In addition to these updates you will notice a few syntax changes and actions items have moved around. Not to worry, a guide to "where your stuff went" will be posted on the homepage so you can quickly catch up, but for the most part the changes should be intuitive enough that you should be able to find your way around rather seamlessly.

We want to apologize in advance for an inconvenience our maintenance downtime may cause, we promise to return as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you can follow our @thwack handle for real-time updates.

SolarWinds will be at Microsoft Ignite this year (May 4th - 8th) with buttons, stickers, and awesome giveaways in tow (of course). In addition, we have 1 extra full conference pass worth $2,200... and we want YOU to come hang with us. We're really interested to see and hear what IT challenges you've overcome, and more specifically, we want to hear the benefits of deploying SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) in your environment, possibly in addition to other SolarWinds products. For example, are you saving hours or even days trying to hunt down where problems are coming from? Did you implement SAM in your environment to give you a single pane of glass for all of your performance data? Funny enough, I even have a few stories of my own on how SAM helps to locate performance issues on thwack. Whatever it is, we want to hear your story and how SAM has made your life easier as an IT Pro. See the requirements and how to submit your entry below to be entered to win this free pass to MS Ignite!

Contest Rules

Submit a compelling story of yours in the comments below on how SAM has made your life easier as an IT Pro.

We will have a judging panel consisting of mthompson, jkuvlesk, and the elusive aLTeReGo who will review all submissions and pick the winner.

Entries must be received by March 4th.

Winner will be announced on March 5th.

Terms & Conditions attached to this announcement.

Entrant Requirements

You must own and use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor.

You agree to do a brief daily presentation or demo showcasing how you use SAM in your environment at the conference (we will help along the way, of course).

Do you currently use or are planning to move to cloud based services? We want to learn more about you are monitoring your environment. Please complete our survey below before February 27th to earn 500 thwack points! All participants, regardless if you qualify to complete the entire survey, will earn at least 250 points for your time.

We know, everyone’s got an opinion about Discovery and how to make it better. Which is good, because we want to hear it!

We're doing some early work to understand how to improve the usability and efficiency of Network Sonar Discovery, with focus this time on how people initial experiences with it. If you can remember your first experiences with Discovery, take the survey and let us know about it!

You must be a current SolarWinds Orion customer or currently evaluating any SolarWinds Orion products (NPM, SAM, NCM, NTA, WPM, VNQM, IPAM, UDT) to take the survey. We’ll ask you a few questions at the beginning of the survey to make sure you’re a right fit. Even if you don’t qualify to take the survey, you will still get 250 thwack points!

As a thanks to all who qualify and complete the survey, we'll give you 500 thwack points.

We know, everyone’s got an opinion about Discovery and how to make it better. Which is good, because we want to hear it!

We're doing some early work to understand how to improve the usability and efficiency of Network Sonar Discovery, with focus this time on how people initial experiences with it. If you can remember your first experiences with Discovery, take the survey and let us know about it!

You must be a current SolarWinds Orion customer or currently evaluating any SolarWinds Orion products (NPM, SAM, NCM, NTA, WPM, VNQM, IPAM, UDT) to take the survey. We’ll ask you a few questions at the beginning of the survey to make sure you’re a right fit. Even if you don’t qualify to take the survey, you will still get 250 thwack points!

As a thanks to all who qualify and complete the survey, we'll award 500 thwack points.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed a trending topic that IT Pros are continuously hearing about or reacting to; network security. IT security should be both proactive and responsive - that means well planned configuration management, continuous monitoring, keeping back doors closed, and being able to rapidly identify, quarantine, and mitigate threads. This month we've got your back to ensure all your bases are covered.

February's Mission

Earn your security stripes and command your network infrastructure in this month's mission: NetSec Boot Camp! Each week we will feature a different SolarWinds solution that will help you better protect your network. At the end of each week we'll be giving away a $100 Amazon gift card but you'll need to solve the entire puzzle below to reveal the grand prize. Simply solve all 20 fill-in-the-blank questions over the course of the month and with each correctly answered question you'll reveal 1 letter in the name of the secret grand prize. Answer all 20 questions correctly, use the template below to decipher the grand prize code, and be entered to win!

Mission Rules

A new question will open every day (Monday - Friday) starting on February 2nd.

Once a question has opened, it will remain open until February 27th @ 11:59pm CST. Check the schedule below for exact open/close times.

You must correctly answer the question to reveal that day's grand prize code letter. If you insert an incorrect answer, the page will simply keep refreshing until you've found the correct answer.

Download and print the template below to keep track of each day's letter and help you decipher the grand prize code.

Answer all 5 questions within a given week and be entered to win a $100 Amazon

Answer all 20 questions over the course of the month

150 points are being awarded for each correctly answered question. There are 20 questions which means you can earn a maximum of 3,000 points for this mission.

SolarWinds solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base in the THWACK® online community. More than 150,000 members are here to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly contribute to our product development process. Learn more today by joining.

SolarWinds uses cookies on its websites to make your online experience easier and better. By using our website,
you consent to our use of cookies. For more information on cookies, see our cookie policy.